LUX British experimental short film programme
The works in this programme stress the funny, comic or satirical. They embrace a variety
of genres : one-liners, quasi-documentary, structuralist parodies and others. Programme
shows works from 70ies till today produced by variety of talented British filmmakers,
among them John Smith, George Barber, David Blandy, Avie Luthra, Tim Macmillan.
GEORGE BARBER
WALKING OFF COURT
UK, 2003, 10 mins, video
Walking Off Court concerns a story I saw in the Times about
a tennis coach called James Goodman who had a nervous
breakdown around about the time that a motorway was built
right outside his house. He spent a lot of time aimlessly
walking in circles around new roads and road works.
I contacted him and even ended up playing tennis with him.
The video is loosely the story around his experience and his
changing relationship to his normal circumstances.
DAVID BLANDY
I AM
UK, 2003-4, 2 mins, video
In ‘i am’, Blandy investigates one of the primary
character-forming factors in his development , the
father/son relationship. Blandy explores the complex
mix of competition, pride and love in this relationship
through re-enacting a scene in “Star Wars: The
Empire Strikes Back” with his own father (who is
also an artist), where Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke Skywalker’s father. The scene
has become iconic in popular culture, being quoted in “Toy Story 2”, “The Simpsons”
and “3rd Rock from the Sun” (among others), but it is so memorable, and humourous,
because the original scene is so emotionally wrought, and exceedingly shocking in a
space adventure movie; the personification of evil is the progenitor of the “good” hero.
IAN BREAKWELL
NINE JOKES
1971, silent, B&W,12 mins, 16mm
A series of very short films, joined together in a
single roll for consecutive showing one to nine. A
typical film consisting of a 10 sec. black stencilled
caption which describes either objectively, or
ironically, the image(s) which occupy the remaining
30 secs. of film time. Mostly one-shot with a fixed
camera. In running order the films are:
1) THE ART WORLD ERUPTS 30 secs
2) CONTAINER 65 secs
3) GULP 40 secs
4).YES/NO 90 secs
5) SLEEP 120 secs
6) PEA 50 secs
7) THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD 40 secs
8) PASTORALE 60 secs
9) FEEL 75 secs
ANN COURSE
UNTITLED
UK, 2004, 3 mins, video
Your nuts my hole. Doomed by witnessing the sex act the mummy's curse is awoken.
Public flowers mark the location of violation.
ANDREW FISHER
X REQUESTS
UK, 1974, sound, colour, 15 mins, 16mm
Written and produced: Andrew Fisher, Ed Devereaux, Brain Tapply, John Peel.
This film, a short comedy, is a sequel to The Adventures of X, by Fisher and Newman,
financed by the BFI Production Fund in 1967. It was made as an experiment on a very
low budget with the help of some distinguished film-makers and performers. It uses
encounters between stereotypes to represent fears current in 1974, a time when Britain's
fortunes were at their lowest ebb.
X, an anonymous everyman figure, wanders around London ravaged by inflation,
unemployment, homelessness, terrorism and foreign money. X's sole asset is a transistor
radio and the dispossessed peer enviously at him and it. The film records X's attempts to
have a record played for him on a phone-in request show. The hysterical disc jockey
(John Peel) plays the BBC's only remaining record over and over again... - A.F.
JOHN GOODWN
HAIRPIECE
UK, 1994, 4 mins, video
Walter Mitty meets Vidal Sassoon in this humerous short. An entertaining exploration of
how hairstyles define character and roles.
AVIE LUTHRA
FAMILY BUSINESS
UK, 1993, sound, colour, 9 mins, 16mm
A spoof study of a Glaswegian Asian entrepreneur who runs a marriage bureau which
uses video introductions. The film looks at the problems of traditional Asian values set
within a British context and within a technologically advanced culture. It also parodies
the artifice inherent in the film/video medium.
TIM MACMILLAN
ANIMAL TRAGIC
UK, 2004, 7 mins, video
An unsettling take on the ‘natural history’ of our
contemporary urban environment, recreating three
reported incidents where humans and ‘friendly’
animals interact badly – a postman kills a dog, a
dog attacks a child, a horse kills a cyclist.
PHIL MULLOY
COWBOYS
UK, 1992, sound, B&W, 3 mins, 35mm
A series of six three minute shorts which comment
on contemporary values through a reinterpretation
of the myths of the Old Wild West
AN ANIMATE! FILM
ALISON MURRAY
CAT FOOD WOMAN
UK, 1997, 1 min, video
Cat Food Woman plays with the erotic undertones of cat food advertisements, with
deliciously tongue-in-cheek results.
MIRANDA PENNELL
FISTICUFFS
UK, 2004, sound, colour, 11 mins, video
A bloke walks into a pub...
Six actors punch, kick and wrestle their way through the Wild West of an East London
drinking establishment.
A formal approach (to choreography, framing and editing) ensures that the viewer is
made aware of the choreographed nature of the violence. This violence appears to have
no consequences, the actors bodies being as rubbery and invulnerable as those in the TV
Westerns that inspired the film.
CHRIS SHEPHERD & DAVID SHRIGLEY
WHO I AM AND WHAT I WANT
UK, 2005, 6 mins, video
A scribbled, strangely funny but highly unsettling
examination of the human condition. The story of a
man who bares his emotions, history, hang ups and
desires in all of their dysfunctional absurdity then
leaves us to assemble not only his identity but
to question our own.
An animate! Film
JOHN SMITH
THE GIRL CHEWING GUM
UK, 1976, sound, B&W, 12 mins, 16mm & video
'In The Girl Chewing Gum an authoritative voice-over preempts the events occurring in the image, seeming to order
not only the people, cars and moving objects within the
screen but also the actual camera movements operated on
the street in view. In relinquishing the more subtle use of
voice-over in television documentary, the film draws attention to the control and directional
function of that practice: imposing, judging, creating an imaginary scene from a visual trace.
This 'Big Brother' is not only looking at you but ordering you about as the viewer's
identification shifts from the people in the street to the camera eye overlooking the scene.
The resultant voyeurism takes on an uncanny aspect as the blandness of the scene (shot in
black and white on a grey day in Hackney) contrasts with the near 'magical' control identified
with the voice. The most surprising effect is the ease with which representation and
description turn into phantasm through the determining power of language.' - Michael
Maziere, John Smith's Films: Reading the Visible' Undercut 10/11.
'John Smith's improbable treatise on representation has deservedly become a Co-op
classic.' - Ian Christie,Time Out.
JOHN SMITH
OM
UK, 1986, sound, colour, 4 mins, 16mm & video
A film about haircuts, clothes and image/sound relationships. - J.S.
'This four minute film explores our response to stereotypes - aural, visual and ideological.
Smith signals these stereotypes to the viewer through a chiefly associational system,
which deftly manipulates the path of our expectations. The structure is stunningly simple
and deceptively subtle. We are taken on a journey from one concrete stereotype to its
diametric opposite, as images transform and juxtapose to, ultimately, invert our
interpretation of what we see and hear.' Gary Davis.